New York Times columnist William Safire isn't just a splenetic armchair general, he's a senile, splenetic armchair general. In his column today, he urges Bush Junior to take out Saddam as part of the war against evil. As usual, Safire distorts facts, saying that Osama bin Laden demands an Israeli exit from Palestine and U.S. non-"interference" with Iraq. Here's what yours truly posted on the NYT Safire chatboard (under a fake, "don't spam me" NYT sign-in name), and also sent in a non-pseudonymous email to the Times: "In his October 8 column urging war to 'liberate' Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, William Safire misinterprets the demands stated in Osama bin Laden's October 7 videotaped speech. According to Safire, bin Laden requests 'the removal of Jews from Palestine and the end of America's interference with Iraq.' This is inaccurate. At the end of his speech, bin Laden says: 'I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Mohammad.' Of course, the 'land of Mohammad' is Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. Bin Laden mentions Iraq a couple of times as an example of U.S. aggression, but he also mentions the bombing of Japan in WWII. It is clear he wants the U.S. to stop supporting Israeli territorial aggression, and to get our military bases out of Saudi Arabia. These demands seem quite reasonable to me."
The Taliban and the like really do want to get rid of Israel altogether, as their ultimate goal. This is nothing new. Many people are convinced that Iraq helped planned the bombings on the WTCs. I don't think Safire is senile, he's merely editorializing. I think your line "Israeli territorial aggression" is, at the very least, a subjective interpretation of the situation.
Safire is free to editorialize all he wants, but when he gets his facts wrong, allegations of senility are completely fair. In his battle cry to fight a war on two fronts, he says that proof of an al-Qaeda/Iraqi alliance comes from bin Laden himself, and this isn't so, for the reasons I mentioned. What "people think" about Iraq isn't the issue, and hardly constitutes evidence to start yet another war against that U.S.-created monster. As for the desire of the Taliban to crush Israel, an army of 40,000 starving fanatics isn't going to drive a nuclear power a thousand miles away into the sea any time soon. Israel can lessen tensions in that part of the world, however, by getting back to the negotiation table to discuss what to do with the territories it occupies as a result of its--excuse me but it's true--aggressive annexation of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967.
Here's a pretty articulate letter in Salon laying out the case against the U.S.-as-bully. On Israeli aggression, please see this article, written pre-9/11 (it lays on the German/Vichy France comparison a bit thick, but its point of view is something you don't see in most American media). For a fascinating history of how we created, and then turned against, Saddam, please see two letters to Jesse Helms (!) from right-wing thinker Jude Wanniski: part one is here and part two is here.
And I suppose, In 1973 on the Holy Day of Yom Kippur, when every Arab nation in the region attacked Israel, they were not trying to occupy Israel and it was the Israelis fault. Yassar Arafat was the Osama Bin Ladin of his time in the early 1970s. So excuse the Israelis (and Americans) for adjusting to this Terrosist turned Statesman. The Palestinian State is a concept that is about to have its time as reality, anyway. So, what are you saying: that we should thank Bin Ladin for killing 6,000 of our brothers and sisters to speed up the process? You use a word like "reasonable" in conjunction with a man like that? Something else that's not reported in the American media is that the Israelis actually planned and built beautiful settlements for peace-loving Palestinians. Some people think it's cool to take an opposing side against Democracies, that we're to blame for own misfortunes. We're not innocent, but we're not to blame.
israel was created out of a victorian dream by a small vocal well-to-do faction of european jews who wished to reoccupy the lands of their ancient forefathers. that other peoples had occupied that land for 1500 years was a mere formality. at the time, europeans had even more skewed perceptions of the "subhuman" races and were not overly concerned with the displacement of lesser peoples. after all, these were people to be subjugated. in america we fondly refer to it as Manifest Destiny, for some jews it is Zionism. and while their motives may have been noble in their eyes, the eventual methods for forced removal and relocation were anything but. that the UN mandated the creation of the state of israel only proves that the UN was under the sway of the western powers who were most concerned with maintaining a strong presence in the middle east to protect their economic interests, primarily oil reserves and the suez canal, from the rise of arab nationalism. and those interest remain, although im not sure how vital the canal is today. so is it any wonder after the expulsion of nearly 1 million people that israel should come under attack by those who consider them illegitimate transgressors? and when they occupy areas after 1967 against the wishes of the UN, which is the body that granted them their legitimacy, and they are attacked by the countries whose land they are occupying, they are not to be considered blameworthy? and if you are concerned with democracy it should be noted that the land in israel is nearly entirely owned by the state and they control who lives where and with what services available. i think we decided in america that in a democratic society separate was not equal when it came to race relations. as for notion that 6000 lives lost might make us rethink our policies toward the middle east, i remind you that we dropped two atomic bombs on japan with that same rationale. as we are unlikely to thank bin laden, they were unlikely to thank us for showing them the error of their ways. and you will likely ask yourself, "is he equating americas proud effort in ww2 with bin ladens terrorist attacks?" ultimately, history is propagated by the victorious, although history is not ultimate, it is ongoing. so until we breakthrough to a new consciousness or somesort of technology enabled nirvana there will always be a clash between the overclasses and the underclasses or even overclass versus overclass with the rest of us as cannon fodder as we vie for the power to control the limited resources on this rock spinning through space. you are correct, we are all innocents, but we are not all innocent.
as for your line about the palestinian state becoming a reality that is laughable as its existence is only under consideration because of the threat of terror. had they not fought back they would have been consigned to the dustbin of history and maybe in another 1500 years their progeny would dig up a document which would sanctify their right to reclaim their homeland.
and as for terrorists turned statesman, we call them founding fathers.
Trying to maintain some civility here, I'll think about some of the things you and Tom wrote. You are a barometer reading of the anti-Israel sentiment rising in the US of the years. However, I found your academia soaked preachy remarks rather condescending and your quip about forefathers was insulting and callous to the memory of many many Israeli innocents. I’m logging off.
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times is hardly "anti-Israel," but here's what he has to say on the subject (from his 10/9/01 NYT editorial): "There's one more thing Mr. Sharon needs to understand: Americans want to destroy this terrorist menace so that we and all other free nations, including Israel, can really enjoy our freedom. That's what it's all about. But we are not out to destroy this extremist menace so that Israel will be free to build more settlements or to eat up more Palestinian land. Today the Palestinians are literally at war with each other over whether to make peace with Israel. But if and when the Palestinians ever get their peace act together, Mr. Sharon needs to realize that we are out to make the world safe for Israel to be free, not safe for Israel to occupy the West Bank according to his biblical map — and saying that is not appeasement, it's American."
Well, I said I'd log off, but one last comment so you understand where my comments come from: I completely agree with Thomas Friedman's editorial.
Well, I think I'm coming in as a moderate in this conversation, we'll see as my thoughts flow. I remember a few years ago speaking with some Israeli friends about the formation of Palestine and their take was that the majority of middle class Israelis wanted to raise families and not weapons and wanted their government to make peace. Israel really needs a new leader, not one of the recycled ones from their freedom fighting era of wars. The fundamentalists have too much say in the government there, too. So, as a cultural Jew, and someone that actually lived through the 1973 war as a child in Israel--I do agree, that we are in major overtime for a broad policy shift in Israel. But I will never forget Rabin shaking Arafat's hand with Clinton watching in front of the cameras--the look on Rabin's face has haunted me to this day. My sense is that he realized that that Arafat had a lot of Israeli blood on that hand, but was conceding that his day had finally come. No amount of historical rhetoric can help me balance/resolve that in my mind. I agree that Arafat is a forefather, but I would not exalt him--he is no Ghandi or Martin Luther King and even revisionist history won't write it that way. Personally, I think they should draw boundaries and build an enormous wall and let the Palestinians try to get a country together. It's actually better for the Israelis if they do, if they have family units that get an education and prosper and build a viable economy. Maybe someday the wall can come down, but I look at it as a cast on a broken bone. As for Bin Laden, Tom, I have to agree with one comment, the word "reasonable" and Bin Laden don't belong in the same sentence. You know me, I know that 125 milllion baby male chickens are discarded live to do in America each year--and I detest that kind of waste of life, but I would not take lives to stop it--I find other ways and other ways and other ways.
Matt
Addendum: in his 10/12 column, Thos. Friedman replies to bin Laden's 10/7 videotape, and says, among, other things, "It was also revealing that the only Arab state you mentioned was Iraq." This is the same mistake Safire made. I feel like going down to the Times with a map and a pointer and saying "Mecca. Birthplace of Mohammad. Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the 'Land of Mohammad' in bin Laden's tape means Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. OK?" It's hard not to start thinking conspiratorially, that the industrial-military complex, speaking through the Times and globalist dupes like Friedman, wants attention taken away from Saudi Arabia, where the US has so much economic interest. Bin Laden's right: It's a nasty, corrupt country, and if we had any morality at all we'd walk away from it, oil or no oil (or at the very least, start demanding reforms in exchange for commerce and military protection).
Just to clarify a technical detail: there was one comment posted to this thread that was later deleted by its author. But there had already been a few responses to the comment, and when the original was deleted, those comments that were under it also disappeared (by 'under it' I mean further indented to the right.) This has come up before, but never quite like this where it might appear that some conflict had been intentionally removed. I'm not sure what to do about this. It's not really a bug, but it's not optimal either. This happens because of the way the comments are threaded rather then just appearing one under the other straight down the page (which might actually be a better system.) The way it is now, each comment is really on its own page, and when you see them all nested on one page it is really a view across several pages. Therefore, because of the hierarchical nature of the URLs, a comment on page /comment/1/2/3/4/ will disappear if someone erases the comment at page /comment/1/2/3/.
But nothing is really deleted on the site. Posts (or even whole pages) that are deleted are merely marked as 'deleted' in the database, but they aren't actually thrown away (this is to prevent you from accidently erasing your whole page, say.) So it is possible we could reconstruct the missing pieces if this seems necessary.
I might write up a longer piece about the comments. There are other reasons why I've been thinking about simplifying them into a straight stack and getting rid of the nesting. But I'm still thinking.
Please restore the thread because
it appears my apologies to Dan & Tom
have been lost as well.
Not to whine, but this is a classic
example of Frank Spawned Chaos
that earned me the the monikers
Fragger & Rank. Along with youth
I thought these guys had vacated me
but I guess not.
"And take the Jews. Notwithstanding Marx, Freud and Einstein (the very hallmarks of modern Western civilisation), "Western societies" slaughtered six million Jews before affording them the privilege of being constructed as "Western" -- and then only in conjunction with the creation of the state of Israel, through which Jewish colonists in Palestine proved that a Jew could be as "Western" as the next man. He too could plunder, dispossess and subjugate a de- humanised "non-Western" population."
Since the "flaming" part of the thread was accidentally deleted, I'll take it as a sign from the Machine God that it was "meant to be." Below are two posts from that thread: one is from Frank, which he requested to have reinstated, and one is from alex. Bill also posted, urging that we "get back to work on communication."
The system automatically lists non-member posts as "anonymous". People may forget to put their name in the body of the post, resulting in the same questions that arise from any anonymous publication: what or why are they hiding? Anonymity is legal (is it one of those things we're fighting to protect?) but not generally considered sporting. I'm guessing it's usually an oversight around here. Regardless, civility is better than provocation. I'm not always sure where I stand on these issues, and sometimes I have some anonymous ideas of my own. Talking them out, and comparing them with others' can help. Don't cut off communication. --posted by alex
Dan: Please accept my apology.
I thought I had deleted this post.
& yes, in this instance I am the moron.
--posted by frank
Reminds me of a story my father
tells of the violently flatulent
Queen Victoria whose unstated
protocol was to have the guests
at her table excuse themselves
for her farts. On one particular
evening an Irish ambassador
excused himself "for this & the next
three The Duke of Dingle & the people of Cork humbly excuse themselves..."
More excuses.
thats the kind of story which makes you proud to be an american. it made me laugh. it made me cry. it made my jib squeak.
I thought I smelled something.
Interesting to look back at this post and realize that Safire was beating the war-drum against Iraq less than a month after 9/11. His pitiful attempts to tie the secular Saddam to the fundamentalist Bin Laden have continued for almost a year. Only a handful of Likudnik creeps in the Defense Department (who unfortunately have the Pres's and VP's ears) really believe the sanction-hobbled Saddam is a menace to his neighbors--Safire is one of their reliable press puppets.
Interestingly, Bush Jr's probably-soon-to-be-ex-mideast envoy makes a sensible case against an Iraq war: his remarks are summarized here (dead link--it was Zinni). This is a nice reminder that there are still adults in public life, after months of infantile utterances from the diaper-clad Jr and his crew.
|
New York Times columnist William Safire isn't just a splenetic armchair general, he's a senile, splenetic armchair general. In his column today, he urges Bush Junior to take out Saddam as part of the war against evil. As usual, Safire distorts facts, saying that Osama bin Laden demands an Israeli exit from Palestine and U.S. non-"interference" with Iraq.
Here's what yours truly posted on the NYT Safire chatboard (under a fake, "don't spam me" NYT sign-in name), and also sent in a non-pseudonymous email to the Times:
"In his October 8 column urging war to 'liberate' Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, William Safire misinterprets the demands stated in Osama bin Laden's October 7 videotaped speech. According to Safire, bin Laden requests 'the removal of Jews from Palestine and the end of America's interference with Iraq.' This is inaccurate. At the end of his speech, bin Laden says: 'I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Mohammad.' Of course, the 'land of Mohammad' is Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. Bin Laden mentions Iraq a couple of times as an example of U.S. aggression, but he also mentions the bombing of Japan in WWII. It is clear he wants the U.S. to stop supporting Israeli territorial aggression, and to get our military bases out of Saudi Arabia. These demands seem quite reasonable to me."
- tom moody 10-08-2001 11:39 am
The Taliban and the like really do want to get rid of Israel altogether, as their ultimate goal. This is nothing new. Many people are convinced that Iraq helped planned the bombings on the WTCs. I don't think Safire is senile, he's merely editorializing. I think your line "Israeli territorial aggression" is, at the very least, a subjective interpretation of the situation.
- anonymous (guest) 10-09-2001 7:23 pm
Safire is free to editorialize all he wants, but when he gets his facts wrong, allegations of senility are completely fair. In his battle cry to fight a war on two fronts, he says that proof of an al-Qaeda/Iraqi alliance comes from bin Laden himself, and this isn't so, for the reasons I mentioned. What "people think" about Iraq isn't the issue, and hardly constitutes evidence to start yet another war against that U.S.-created monster. As for the desire of the Taliban to crush Israel, an army of 40,000 starving fanatics isn't going to drive a nuclear power a thousand miles away into the sea any time soon. Israel can lessen tensions in that part of the world, however, by getting back to the negotiation table to discuss what to do with the territories it occupies as a result of its--excuse me but it's true--aggressive annexation of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967.
Here's a pretty articulate letter in Salon laying out the case against the U.S.-as-bully. On Israeli aggression, please see this article, written pre-9/11 (it lays on the German/Vichy France comparison a bit thick, but its point of view is something you don't see in most American media). For a fascinating history of how we created, and then turned against, Saddam, please see two letters to Jesse Helms (!) from right-wing thinker Jude Wanniski: part one is here and part two is here.
- tom moody 10-10-2001 12:24 am
And I suppose, In 1973 on the Holy Day of Yom Kippur, when every Arab nation in the region attacked Israel, they were not trying to occupy Israel and it was the Israelis fault. Yassar Arafat was the Osama Bin Ladin of his time in the early 1970s. So excuse the Israelis (and Americans) for adjusting to this Terrosist turned Statesman. The Palestinian State is a concept that is about to have its time as reality, anyway. So, what are you saying: that we should thank Bin Ladin for killing 6,000 of our brothers and sisters to speed up the process? You use a word like "reasonable" in conjunction with a man like that? Something else that's not reported in the American media is that the Israelis actually planned and built beautiful settlements for peace-loving Palestinians. Some people think it's cool to take an opposing side against Democracies, that we're to blame for own misfortunes. We're not innocent, but we're not to blame.
- anonymous (guest) 10-10-2001 12:36 pm
israel was created out of a victorian dream by a small vocal well-to-do faction of european jews who wished to reoccupy the lands of their ancient forefathers. that other peoples had occupied that land for 1500 years was a mere formality. at the time, europeans had even more skewed perceptions of the "subhuman" races and were not overly concerned with the displacement of lesser peoples. after all, these were people to be subjugated. in america we fondly refer to it as Manifest Destiny, for some jews it is Zionism. and while their motives may have been noble in their eyes, the eventual methods for forced removal and relocation were anything but. that the UN mandated the creation of the state of israel only proves that the UN was under the sway of the western powers who were most concerned with maintaining a strong presence in the middle east to protect their economic interests, primarily oil reserves and the suez canal, from the rise of arab nationalism. and those interest remain, although im not sure how vital the canal is today. so is it any wonder after the expulsion of nearly 1 million people that israel should come under attack by those who consider them illegitimate transgressors? and when they occupy areas after 1967 against the wishes of the UN, which is the body that granted them their legitimacy, and they are attacked by the countries whose land they are occupying, they are not to be considered blameworthy? and if you are concerned with democracy it should be noted that the land in israel is nearly entirely owned by the state and they control who lives where and with what services available. i think we decided in america that in a democratic society separate was not equal when it came to race relations. as for notion that 6000 lives lost might make us rethink our policies toward the middle east, i remind you that we dropped two atomic bombs on japan with that same rationale. as we are unlikely to thank bin laden, they were unlikely to thank us for showing them the error of their ways. and you will likely ask yourself, "is he equating americas proud effort in ww2 with bin ladens terrorist attacks?" ultimately, history is propagated by the victorious, although history is not ultimate, it is ongoing. so until we breakthrough to a new consciousness or somesort of technology enabled nirvana there will always be a clash between the overclasses and the underclasses or even overclass versus overclass with the rest of us as cannon fodder as we vie for the power to control the limited resources on this rock spinning through space. you are correct, we are all innocents, but we are not all innocent.
as for your line about the palestinian state becoming a reality that is laughable as its existence is only under consideration because of the threat of terror. had they not fought back they would have been consigned to the dustbin of history and maybe in another 1500 years their progeny would dig up a document which would sanctify their right to reclaim their homeland.
and as for terrorists turned statesman, we call them founding fathers.
- dave 10-10-2001 3:49 pm
Trying to maintain some civility here, I'll think about some of the things you and Tom wrote. You are a barometer reading of the anti-Israel sentiment rising in the US of the years. However, I found your academia soaked preachy remarks rather condescending and your quip about forefathers was insulting and callous to the memory of many many Israeli innocents. I’m logging off.
- anonymous (guest) 10-10-2001 6:23 pm
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times is hardly "anti-Israel," but here's what he has to say on the subject (from his 10/9/01 NYT editorial):
"There's one more thing Mr. Sharon needs to understand: Americans want to destroy this terrorist menace so that we and all other free nations, including Israel, can really enjoy our freedom. That's what it's all about. But we are not out to destroy this extremist menace so that Israel will be free to build more settlements or to eat up more Palestinian land. Today the Palestinians are literally at war with each other over whether to make peace with Israel. But if and when the Palestinians ever get their peace act together, Mr. Sharon needs to realize that we are out to make the world safe for Israel to be free, not safe for Israel to occupy the West Bank according to his biblical map — and saying that is not appeasement, it's American."
- tom moody 10-10-2001 6:38 pm
Well, I said I'd log off, but one last comment so you understand where my comments come from: I completely agree with Thomas Friedman's editorial.
- anonymous (guest) 10-10-2001 7:21 pm
Well, I think I'm coming in as a moderate in this conversation, we'll see as my thoughts flow. I remember a few years ago speaking with some Israeli friends about the formation of Palestine and their take was that the majority of middle class Israelis wanted to raise families and not weapons and wanted their government to make peace. Israel really needs a new leader, not one of the recycled ones from their freedom fighting era of wars. The fundamentalists have too much say in the government there, too. So, as a cultural Jew, and someone that actually lived through the 1973 war as a child in Israel--I do agree, that we are in major overtime for a broad policy shift in Israel. But I will never forget Rabin shaking Arafat's hand with Clinton watching in front of the cameras--the look on Rabin's face has haunted me to this day. My sense is that he realized that that Arafat had a lot of Israeli blood on that hand, but was conceding that his day had finally come. No amount of historical rhetoric can help me balance/resolve that in my mind. I agree that Arafat is a forefather, but I would not exalt him--he is no Ghandi or Martin Luther King and even revisionist history won't write it that way. Personally, I think they should draw boundaries and build an enormous wall and let the Palestinians try to get a country together. It's actually better for the Israelis if they do, if they have family units that get an education and prosper and build a viable economy. Maybe someday the wall can come down, but I look at it as a cast on a broken bone. As for Bin Laden, Tom, I have to agree with one comment, the word "reasonable" and Bin Laden don't belong in the same sentence. You know me, I know that 125 milllion baby male chickens are discarded live to do in America each year--and I detest that kind of waste of life, but I would not take lives to stop it--I find other ways and other ways and other ways. Matt
- anonymous (guest) 10-11-2001 1:06 am
Addendum: in his 10/12 column, Thos. Friedman replies to bin Laden's 10/7 videotape, and says, among, other things, "It was also revealing that the only Arab state you mentioned was Iraq." This is the same mistake Safire made. I feel like going down to the Times with a map and a pointer and saying "Mecca. Birthplace of Mohammad. Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the 'Land of Mohammad' in bin Laden's tape means Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. OK?" It's hard not to start thinking conspiratorially, that the industrial-military complex, speaking through the Times and globalist dupes like Friedman, wants attention taken away from Saudi Arabia, where the US has so much economic interest. Bin Laden's right: It's a nasty, corrupt country, and if we had any morality at all we'd walk away from it, oil or no oil (or at the very least, start demanding reforms in exchange for commerce and military protection).
- tom moody 10-12-2001 5:29 am
Just to clarify a technical detail: there was one comment posted to this thread that was later deleted by its author. But there had already been a few responses to the comment, and when the original was deleted, those comments that were under it also disappeared (by 'under it' I mean further indented to the right.) This has come up before, but never quite like this where it might appear that some conflict had been intentionally removed. I'm not sure what to do about this. It's not really a bug, but it's not optimal either. This happens because of the way the comments are threaded rather then just appearing one under the other straight down the page (which might actually be a better system.) The way it is now, each comment is really on its own page, and when you see them all nested on one page it is really a view across several pages. Therefore, because of the hierarchical nature of the URLs, a comment on page /comment/1/2/3/4/ will disappear if someone erases the comment at page /comment/1/2/3/.
But nothing is really deleted on the site. Posts (or even whole pages) that are deleted are merely marked as 'deleted' in the database, but they aren't actually thrown away (this is to prevent you from accidently erasing your whole page, say.) So it is possible we could reconstruct the missing pieces if this seems necessary.
I might write up a longer piece about the comments. There are other reasons why I've been thinking about simplifying them into a straight stack and getting rid of the nesting. But I'm still thinking.
- jim 10-12-2001 10:08 am
Please restore the thread because
it appears my apologies to Dan & Tom
have been lost as well.
Not to whine, but this is a classic
example of Frank Spawned Chaos
that earned me the the monikers
Fragger & Rank. Along with youth
I thought these guys had vacated me
but I guess not.
- frank 10-12-2001 1:24 pm
- dave 10-12-2001 1:45 pm
Since the "flaming" part of the thread was accidentally deleted, I'll take it as a sign from the Machine God that it was "meant to be." Below are two posts from that thread: one is from Frank, which he requested to have reinstated, and one is from alex. Bill also posted, urging that we "get back to work on communication."
The system automatically lists non-member posts as "anonymous". People may forget to put their name in the body of the post, resulting in the same questions that arise from any anonymous publication: what or why are they hiding? Anonymity is legal (is it one of those things we're fighting to protect?) but not generally considered sporting. I'm guessing it's usually an oversight around here. Regardless, civility is better than provocation. I'm not always sure where I stand on these issues, and sometimes I have some anonymous ideas of my own. Talking them out, and comparing them with others' can help. Don't cut off communication. --posted by alex
Dan: Please accept my apology.
I thought I had deleted this post.
& yes, in this instance I am the moron.
--posted by frank
- tom moody 10-12-2001 2:08 pm
Reminds me of a story my father
tells of the violently flatulent
Queen Victoria whose unstated
protocol was to have the guests
at her table excuse themselves
for her farts. On one particular
evening an Irish ambassador
excused himself "for this & the next
three The Duke of Dingle & the people of Cork humbly excuse themselves..."
- frank 10-12-2001 2:21 pm
More excuses.
- alex 10-12-2001 2:39 pm
thats the kind of story which makes you proud to be an american. it made me laugh. it made me cry. it made my jib squeak.
- dave 10-12-2001 2:51 pm
I thought I smelled something.
- alex 10-12-2001 4:43 pm
Interesting to look back at this post and realize that Safire was beating the war-drum against Iraq less than a month after 9/11. His pitiful attempts to tie the secular Saddam to the fundamentalist Bin Laden have continued for almost a year. Only a handful of Likudnik creeps in the Defense Department (who unfortunately have the Pres's and VP's ears) really believe the sanction-hobbled Saddam is a menace to his neighbors--Safire is one of their reliable press puppets.
Interestingly, Bush Jr's probably-soon-to-be-ex-mideast envoy makes a sensible case against an Iraq war: his remarks are summarized here (dead link--it was Zinni). This is a nice reminder that there are still adults in public life, after months of infantile utterances from the diaper-clad Jr and his crew.
- tom moody 8-27-2002 2:44 pm